The Cereal Murders

by Diane Mott Davidson

  I groaned. “It’s a good thing I’m not prone to jealousy. I’d say you were a better cook than I am.”

  “Not much chance of that.” He had turned on his outside light and was peering into the night. “Darn. It’s stopped snowing.”

  So we had had the same thought. Once again I veered away from this emotional territory, the way you leap onto a makeshift sidewalk when the sign says HARD HATS ONLY!

  Schulz wordlessly cut the cake and handed me a generous slice of what was actually two thin layers of fudge cake separated by a fat wedge of raspberry sherbet. Unlike my ex-husband, who had always had a vague notion that I liked licorice (I detest it), Schulz invariably served chocolate—my weakness.

  Of course, the cake was exquisite. When it was reduced to crumbs, I licked my fingers, sighed, and asked, “Does Keith Andrews’ family have money?”

  He shrugged and leaned over to turn off the light. “Yes and no.” He picked up my hand and ran his fingers over it lightly. The same gesture he had used with the credit card, I remembered. “Thought any more about my name-change offer?”

  “Yes and no.”

  He let out an exasperated chuckle. “Wrong answer.”

  The firelight flickered over his sturdy body, over his hopeful, inviting face, and into eyes dark with a caring I wasn’t quite willing to face.

  “Goldy,” he said. He smiled. “I care. Believe it?”

  “Yeah. Sure. But … aren’t you … don’t you … think about all that’s happened? You know, your nurse?”

  “Excuse me, Miss G., but it’s you who lives in the past.” He took both of my hands in his, lifted them, and kissed them.

  “I do not live in the past.” My protest sounded weak. “And I have the psychotherapy bills to prove it.”

  He leaned in to kiss me. He caught about half of my mouth, which made us both laugh. The only sounds in the room were fire crackle and slow breaths. For a change, I was at a loss for words.

  Without unlocking his eyes from mine, Schulz slipped one hand to the small of my back and inscribed gentle circles there. How I wanted to be loved again.

  I said, “Oh, I don’t know …”

  “You do care about me, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  And I did, too. I loved having this beautiful meal, this hissing fire, this lovely man whose touch now made me shiver after all the years of self-righteous celibacy. The wax from the lit red candles on the dining table melted, dripped, and spiraled. I took Schulz’s hands. They were rough, big hands, hands that every day, in ways I could only imagine, probed questions about life and death and feeling morally grounded in your actions. I smiled, lifted my hands to his face, and corrected the angle of his head so that when I brought his lips to mine, this time they would fit exactly.

  We made love on his couch, our clothes mostly oh, in a great shuddering hurry. Then, tenderly, he put his hands around my waist and said we should go upstairs. On the staircase, with my loosened clothes more or less falling around me, one of his hands caught me by the hip and pressed me into the wall. And this time he did not miss when his warm mouth found mine.

  His log-paneled bedroom with its high-pitched ceiling had the inviting scent of aftershave and pinewood. Schulz handed me a thick, soft terry-cloth robe. He lit a kerosene lamp next to his hewn four-poster. The flame lit us and the bed, leaving the far reaches of the room deep in shadow. Beneath my bare feet the wood floor felt creamy-cold. I slipped between cool cotton sheets, keeping the robe on.

  He bent toward me. “You all right?”

  “I am very all right.”

  Schulz’s body depressed the mattress next to me when he slid between the sheets and I involuntarily slid toward him. The sensation was odd after five years of sleeping alone. He pulled the down comforter around my shoulders and whispered, “I love you now and forever and ever.”

  I couldn’t help it. Tears slid out of my eyes. My breath raked across the back of my throat. He hugged me tightly and I mumbled into his warm shoulder, “Thank you. Thank you,” as his fingers tenderly worked their way under the robe.

  This time the caresses were slow and lingering, so that the great heaving release took us by surprise. Just as I was drifting off to sleep, I saw Schulz, somewhere in my mind’s eye, take my ripped carcass of a heart and gently, gently begin sewing.

  I woke up with a start sometime in the middle of the night. I thought: I have to get home, God, this is incredible. Schulz and I had rolled apart. I turned to look at his face and the shape of his body in the moonlight streaming through the uncurtained window. His cheeks were slack, like a child’s; his mouth was slightly open. I kissed his eyelids. They were like the velvety skin of new peaches. His eyes opened. He propped himself up on an elbow. “You okay? Need to go? Need some help?”

  “Yes, I need to go, but no thanks, I don’t need help.” And I was fine. For a change.

  I dressed quickly, gave Schulz a long, wordless hug, and hightailed it toward home in the Rover. It was just past midnight. The snow had stopped and the clouds had parted. The moon shone high and bright in the sky, a pure white crescent. The clean, cold air gushing through the car windows was incomparably sweet. I felt wonderful, light-headed, lighthearted, giddy. I steered the Rover with one hand and laughed. An enormous weight had lifted from me; I was floating.

  Unfortunately, my hope of sneaking quietly to bed was not to be realized. When I pulled up curbside, it was my house, and mine alone on the snow-covered street, that shone like a beacon. Lights blazed from every window.

  “Where have you been?” Julian accused when I came through the security system.

  The house reeked of cigarette smoke. Julian had beer on his breath. He looked horrid. His face was gray, his eyes bloodshot. His unwashed mohawk haircut stood up in tiny tepees.

  “Don’t tell me you had more trouble with someone throwing—” I began, stunned out of my idyll. When he shook his head, I said, “Never mind where I’ve been. What is going on here? You don’t smoke. You’re a swimmer, for God’s sake! And what’s with the beer breath, Mr. Underage?”

  “I have been so worried!” Julian hollered as he slammed into the kitchen ahead of me.

  So much for my great mood. What in heaven’s name was going on? How had Julian gotten himself into such a state? I came home late all the time, although now I recalled belatedly that Julian and Arch usually checked the calendar to see where my catering assignment was on any given evening. Maybe Julian just wasn’t used to not knowing where I was. On the other hand, maybe he was worried about something else. Stay calm, I resolved.

  I followed him into the kitchen. “Where is Arch?” I said in a low voice.

  “In bed,” Julian tossed over his shoulder, and opened my walk-in refrigerator. Next to the sink were three glass beer bottles, empty, ready to be recycled. Three beers! I could be put in jail for allowing him to drink in my home.

  Chinese stars were scattered over the financial aid books stacked on the gingham tablecloth. Chinese stars are sharp-edged metal stars about the size of an adult’s palm, which is where you can hide them, I had once been told. I had learned about the weapons unexpectedly, when a boy at Arch’s elementary school had been caught with them. The principal had sent the students home with a mimeographed note about the weapons. Used in Tae Kwon Do, Chinese stars were banned at the school because when thrown, the letter explained, they could inflict great damage. The fellow who had brought them to Furman Elementary School had been summarily suspended. Looking straight at Julian, I scooped them all up and placed them in a pile on the counter. “What is going on?”

  Julian emerged from the refrigerator. He held a platter of cookies. In times of stress, eat sweets.

  He said, “I’m going to kill the kid who threatened Arch.” So saying, he popped two cookies into his mouth and chewed voraciously.

  “Really. If you have cookies on top of beer, you’ll throw up.”

  He slammed the platter down. “Don’t you even care? Do you realize he’s not
safe at that school?”

  “Well, excuse me, Mr. Mom. Yes, I realize it. Mr. Perkins seems to think it’s a joke, however. A seventh-grade joke.” I took a cookie. “Arch called Schulz, though, and told him all about the snake.”

  Julian slapped his compact body down on a chair; he ran a hand through the sparse crop of hair. “Do you think we could hire a bodyguard for Arch? How much would that cost?”

  I swallowed. “Julian. You are very protective and sweet. However. You are overreacting. A bodyguard is not the answer to Arch’s problems.”

  “You don’t know these people! They’re vicious! They steal and cheat! Look at what they did to Keith!”

  “What people?”

  He squeezed his eyes shut. “You just don’t get it. You’re just … indifferent. The Elk Park Prep people, that’s what people. Perkins is always talking about trust and responsibility. Two coats, a cassette, and forty dollars were stolen out of my locker last year. Trust? It’s a crock.”

  “Okay. Look. Julian, please. I’m not indifferent. I agree with you that there’s a problem. I just don’t know what to do. But I can tell you a bodyguard is out of the question.”

  His eyes opened; he scowled. “I went to the newspaper because I know there’s a snake lady in Aspen Meadow. You know, she comes into the schools and does demonstrations with live snakes. Maybe we can find out who got the rattler by contacting her, I know she sells them—”

  “Julian! For heaven’s sake!”

  “Don’t you understand what’s at stake here? He’s not safe! None of us is safe!”

  With a third cookie halfway to my mouth, I gaped at him. “Couldn’t you please cool off? The way to react to this is not to smoke, drink, pull out your weapons, and put the screws on the snake lady, okay?” I put the cookie back on the platter and took a deep breath. “Won’t you please go up and get some sleep? You’re going to need your energy, with that midterm tomorrow and the college boards right around the corner. I need to go to bed too,” I added as an afterthought.

  “Do you promise me you’ll follow through with Schulz?”

  “I’m way ahead of you, Julian.”

  He thought about that for a minute, then shot an accusing look at me. “You never told me where you were.”

  “Not that I need to answer to you, but I actually had dinner with Schulz. Okay?”

  He glanced at the ceramic clock that hangs over my sink. One o’clock. “Kinda late for dinner, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Julian, go to bed.”

  8

  My phone rang at seven o’clock. I groped for it.

  “Goldilocks’ Catering, Where Everything—”

  “Ah, Goldy the caterer?” said Father Olson.

  “Oh, Lord!” I gargled into the mouthpiece. “Who told you?”

  “Er—”

  “I mean, how could you have found out? It was just last night!”

  “What?”

  I pressed my face into my pillow and knew better than to speak. An awkward silence ensued while I involuntarily recalled the Sunday school teaching on sexual activity between single adults—“… either single and celibate or married and faithful.”

  Oh well. The silence lengthened. Father Olson cleared his throat.

  I sat up gingerly, wondering if priests were frequently greeted with early morning guilt. Maybe they learned to ignore it. After a minute, Father Olson resumed a normal tone. “I’m sorry to call so early, Goldy. Ahh … but I have an all-day clergy meeting in Denver, and I wanted to give you the final count on Friday’s luncheon board meeting. There’ll be twelve of us.”

  I swallowed hard. “Twelve. How biblical.”

  “Can you tell me the menu? Because of our theological discussion.”

  “Fish,” I said succinctly.

  When I didn’t elaborate, he mumbled something that was not a blessing, and disconnected. The phone immediately rang again. I flopped back down on the mattress. Why me?

  “Come to Aspen Meadow,” intoned Marla’s husky voice, “the promiscuity capital of the western United States.”

  I rolled over and peered blearily at the early morning grayness. Clouds shrouded the distant mountains like a woolen blanket.

  “I don’t know why George Orwell bothered to write 1984. He obviously never had to live in a small town, where Big Brother is a fact of life.”

  “So you’re not going to deny it?” Marla demanded.

  “I’m not saying anything. Tell me why you’re calling so early.”

  “In case you’re wondering how I suspected that something was up, so to speak, my dear, I called your fellow I like so much, that teen housemate-helper—”

  “His name is Julian.”

  “Yes, well, I called you numerous times last night and got young Julian, who, as I say, is somewhat more forthright than his employer. He said your calendar didn’t show any catering assignments.” She stopped to take a noisy bite of something. “When he still knew nothing at eleven, but was obviously quite besieged with worry, I thought, This is our early-to-bed, early-to-work much-beloved town caterer?” She took time out to chew, then added, “Besides, if you’d been in an accident, I would have heard before now.”

  “How reassuring. Marla, I have a full day of cooking ahead, and so—”

  “Tut-tut, not so fast, tell me what’s going on in your love life. I don’t want to hear about it from anyone else.”

  Well, you’re not going to hear about it from me, either. I laughed lightly and replied, “Everything you suspect is true. And more.”

  “From the wounded warrior, Miss Cut and Chaste? I don’t think so.”

  “Look. I had dinner with Schulz. Let me reflect a little bit before I have to analyze the relationship to death, okay?”

  That seemed to satisfy her. “All right. Go cook. But when you take a break, I have some real news for you concerning the Elk Park preppies. Unless you want it now, of course.”

  This was so typical of her. “Make it fast and simple,” I said. “I haven’t had any caffeine yet.”

  “Don’t complain to me that you’re still in bed, when you could be trying to figure out what’s going on out at Colorado’s premier prep school. All right—that German pseudo-academic guy out there? The one who wrote the Faust dissertation?”

  “Egon Schlichtmaier. What about him?”

  “He helped you with that dinner, right?”

  “He did. I don’t know much about him.”

  “Well, I do, because he’s single and has therefore been the subject of the usual background investigation from the women in step aerobics.”

  I shook my head. How women at the Aspen Meadow Athletic Club could manage to step up, down, and sideways at dizzying speeds while trading voluminous amounts of news and gossip was one of the wonders of modern physiology. Yet it was done, regularly and enthusiastically.

  I ordered, “Go ahead.”

  “Egon Schlichtmaier is twenty-seven years old,” Marla rattled on, “but he and his family immigrated to this country when there was still a Berlin Wall, in the seventies. Despite his problems learning English, Herr Schlichtmaier got a good education, including a Ph.D. in literature from dear old C.U. in Boulder. But poor Egon was unable to get a college teaching job.”

  “So what else is new? I heard the ratio of humanities doctorates to available jobs is about ten to one.”

  “Let me finish. Egon Schlichtmaier is also extremely good-looking. He works out with weights and has a body to die for.”

  I conjured up a mental picture of the history teacher. He was short, which meant I could look right into his olive-toned baby face with its big brown eyes. He had curly black hair and long black eyelashes, and whenever I had seen him he had been wearing khaki pants, an oxford-cloth shirt in some pastel shade, and a fashionable jacket. Ganymede meets Ralph Lauren.

  “What else?” The lack of coffee was beginning to get to me. Besides, and I was astonished that I even had this thought, Schulz might be trying to reach me.

  “A
ll right, here’s the scoop … he was a teaching assistant at C.U., and he was caught having affairs with no less than three female undergraduates. At the same time. Which is his business, I guess, except that the word got around at the Modern Language Association convention. The universities, when they got wind of it, wouldn’t offer him a job scrubbing floors. Seems they thought the last thing they needed was a prof who would cause trouble among tuition-paying undergraduates.”

  Since I was no longer what we would call pristine in the lust department, I avoided judgment. But three at a time? Consecutively or simultaneously? I said, “Did all the academics from coast to coast know these details?”

  “The way I heard it, only the hiring schools knew.” She chewed some more of whatever it was. “The headmaster at Elk Park Prep owed the head of the C.U. comparative literature department a favor from some kid the department chairman helped to get into C.U., so Perkins hired Egon Schlichtmaier as a kind of interim thing to teach U.S. history. Mind you, this was after he had fired another American history teacher, a Miss Pamela Samuelson, over some unknown scandal last year. This year Egon was supposed to keep looking for a college teaching job.”

  “Miss Samuelson? Miss Pamela Samuelson? Why is that name familiar?”

  “Pamela Samuelson was in your aerobics class before you quit the club, dummy.”

  “Oh, yes,” I said, still unable to conjure up a face. “What about Egon Schlichtmaier’s history with the female undergraduates? How could Perkins justify having that kind of guy around?”

  Marla sighed gustily. “Come on, Goldy. First of all, as you and I both know, if nobody squeals about how awful a guy is, then his reputation remains intact.”

  “So the undergraduates weren’t talking. And the news didn’t outlive the MLA convention?”

  “Apparently not. And if anybody else did find out, I think the spin Perkins was looking for was that this was youthful excess that people would soon forget if the issue were left alone. The word is, Perkins warned Egon not to get involved with the preppie females, or he’d be teaching French to the longhorn steers down at the stock show. And there’s no evidence Egon went after anyone who wasn’t close to his own age. More on that later. Here’s the problem. How willing do you think a college would be to hire Schlichtmaier if his background were exposed in a series of articles for the Mountain Journal by an ambitious student-reporter aiming to spice up his application to the Columbia School of Journalism?”